Sunday Worship 10 May | Being Community

Acts 2:42-47

All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

We are now onto week four of our series looking at holy habits or spiritual practices. These are things we do which deepen our faith and broaden our understanding and strengthen our connections with God and ourselves and the world. We started with deepening prayer, exploring different ways of praying which might help us to be honest in the way we speak to God but also open in the way we listen to God. We then looked at exploring scripture, looking at how we might approach it through study and imagination and discussion. And last week we reflected on practising ritual, recognising the value of doing things with intention and attention and repetition.

Before we move on to today’s theme, I wanted to remind you that I prefaced this series by talking about spiritual pathways, the idea that we are naturally drawn to different ways of engaging with faith. The seven pathways I mentioned where these:

activism | taking action to right a wrong or initiate a change

contemplation | enjoying prayer and meditation

nature | experiencing God through our senses and the natural world

intellect | pursuing knowledge and wisdom

relationships | connecting with others

service | completing meaningful tasks on behalf of others

worship | participating in creative expression or shared ritual

I said that these spiritual pathways roughly mapped onto the holy habits we were going to be looking at. They are not a perfect fit by any means, but deepening prayer will resonate most with those who pathway is contemplation. Engaging scripture is not a purely academic effort but is perhaps most likely to appeal to those who prioritise intellect. And practising ritual may be most meaningful for those whose spirituality is expressed through worship. Still to come, being community is most vital for those who thrive in relationships. Living well will be important to those who connect through nature. Serving others obviously comes most naturally to those who connect through service. And speaking up will be a priority for those who follow the pathway of activism.

Perhaps you have a feeling straight away for with of these you are most drawn to, or perhaps this is something you are still discovering. I think it can be a helpful thing to reflect on and try to identify in ourselves, because then we can lean in to our natural spirituality, although as I said before, I would also encourage you to be open to exploring other pathways, because challenge can enrich us in surprising ways.

For now, let us move to this morning’s focus, which is being community. Perhaps you haven’t thought of this as a distinct spiritual practice before, but there is something deeply spiritual about being in community, and we know that because it is good for our spirits. And it is certainly something we must practice, at least in order to do it well. Navigating relationships can be tricky, and exponentially so when we are navigating a whole network of relationships. We must work out how to deal with different opinions, and how to respond to different characters. We must learn how to hold the most important parts of who we are with integrity, while making space for others to not only join us but perhaps even to change us. It is joyous and rewarding work, but it is work nonetheless, and it isn’t always easy, however much we love those we are in community with.

And love is the key here. I don’t expect that comes as a surprise, but it’s still worth saying. When Peter, who had surely learnt much from spending three years watching Jesus corral a ragtag bunch of disciples, wrote to the dispersed Christian communities across the Roman empire, he told them “above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins”. It’s not that love allows us to get away with our sins, but that love teaches us how to deal with them, how to practice forgiveness and make amends so that those sins do not tear our communities apart. Perhaps I seem to have begun on a negative note, but of course love isn’t just for when things go wrong, it is what makes things go right.

I have preached on 1 Corinthians 13 at weddings and funerals, and I understand why people are drawn to it at times that they are thinking most about their nearest and dearest, but it is about all the many loves that we experience and express. It tells us how we are called to love one another in community, so let’s hear it now: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

Paul writes more about what this love looks like in practice in his letter to the Romans: Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honour one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath…Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

And we get an even more practical insight into love in community if we go back to this morning’s reading: All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

I think the key to it all is in that first sentence. They were together and had everything in common. It may seem painfully obvious, but simply being together is where we start. The lockdowns six years ago taught us the particular value of being in the same physical space, but they also taught us that with a  bit of imagination and a bit of technology, we can find other ways of gathering, and those ways continue to be really important for people for whom physical space can be inaccessible. So this isn’t to advocate for one particular way of being together, but to say that we need to give each other our time and our presence and our truth. We need to stitch our lives together. And part of that is holding things in common. Not agreeing on everything, but holding all we have and all we are together. This means having the generosity to share what we do have, but also the humility to admit what we don’t have.

This glimpse into the life of the early church also reminds us that community should not be insular. It does not protect us from the world, but rather prepares us for the world. The church grew daily, because they enjoyed the favour of all the people. We know that favour didn’t last forever, and the church faced persecution as it came to be seen as a threat by the ruling authorities, but away from that power machine it was seen as a way of being that people wanted to be a part of. They were drawn to the community, and there they found Christ, and that is how it should be. In our context the problem is not so much that the church is oppressed by the power machine, but that it has become the power machine. The church has fallen into many of the trappings that come with being established, and that is a large part of why we no longer enjoy the favour of all the people. It is when we get back to the essence of community that we regain that favour and people are drawn to us. We have seen that ourselves in the way we have grown since strengthening our commitment to inclusion.

Two quick points before I close. First, I have had this church in view as I have been speaking, but this won’t be the only community that we are a part of, and community doesn't have to be specifically Christian in order to be a place that we meet with God. We speak of God as Trinity and so we understand God as a community in Godself. It should be no surprise then that community is one of the aspects of our lives that is most able to reflect the love and depth of God, and that is something to rejoice in wherever we find it.

And second, I spoke last week about the idea of a rule of life, a set of rituals and liturgies that defines the life of a community. I said that not every community needs a formal rule of life, although we all have shared ways of being and doing that define us, but I still haven’t been able to shake the question of what our rule of life would look like? I don’t have an answer, but I do have the beginning of a suggestion. A colleague of mine christened our statement of inclusion the ‘Stoneygate Declaration’, and I wonder if we might also write a ‘Stoneygate Prayer’, a short liturgy that we use in both our shared and dispersed lives. A project for another day, perhaps.